WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) / The Peoplemover 1968 – A demonstration poem

Is collective work still a political standpoint?A marketing strategy? A failed project?A necessity for our survival?

How would a demonstration poem look like today?

WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is an artistic investigation on the topic of collectivities and the significance of the pronoun “we”. As part of the project a series of events was organized in the nGbK, New Society of Visual Arts in Berlin in 2013. Throughout the five events a variety of textual material was produced and compiled. The text took the shape of a theater play and is now published as abook. The exploration of different means of textual production was a fundamental part of each of the five events and the results have been transcribed, selected, fragmented and recombined, composing dialogues and speculative interactions. The sources of those words have been carefully kept – when possible – and appear alongside the text, in an attempt to evidence the complexity and veiled references existing in many speech acts, at the same time being willing to complicate the notion of authenticity and authorship.

The inspiration for the methodology employed in this book is a result of an encounter with Mary Ellen Solt’s poem “THE PEOPLEMOVER 1968 A Demonstration Poem“. The poem as well as its first German translation is reprinted as part of this book.